‘Demand for air-conditioners shoots up due to rise in mercury’

Source: The Hitavada Date: 17 Apr 2017 10:04:23

By Ravi Chandpurkar,

WITH the rising mercury the demand for air-conditioners is witnessing a boom. “In the months of January, February and March the demand for air-conditioners (ACs) has been overwhelming. Also, during the three days of Gudi Padwa, the demand was fantastic from the customers,” said Nihar Taori of Taori Marketing situated at Sitabuldi while talking to The Hitavada. During the first three months of the year, leading manufacturers of air-conditioners realised an increase in demand by more than 20 per cent to 25 per cent compared to the year-ago period. Taori Marketing also registered a rise in demand by 40 percent during the same period compared to last year, he said.

People were taking informed decisions and selecting air-conditioners after getting all details of the product, company and technology. The most preferred choice of the people was the 1.5- tonne five-star rating split airconditioners which accounted for 70 per cent of the demand.

The 1-tonne and 2-tonne air-conditioners accounted for 20 per cent and commercial 10 per cent.The window air-conditioners had lost their charm and the demand had dropped considerably, he pointed out.He said that nowadays, air-conditioners had become a necessity rather than a luxury product.

Also, changing lifestyles and higher income levels of people had made air-conditioners the mostpreferred choice in order to maintain a cool environment throughout the year. The five-star invertor technology allowed lower electricity bills. Invertor technology helped reduce energy consumption by 35 per cent to 40 per cent restricting the inflated electric bills coupled with zero down payment, no processing fee and easy-to-get finance schemes had tilted the consumers in favour ofair-conditioners. Similarly, the middle-class, which already had air-conditioners, was upgrading to new advanced models introduced by manufacturers.

“LG has stopped manufacturing normal air-conditioners and switched over to air-conditioners equipped with invertor technology,” he added.Looking at the expanding demand for air-conditioners, Taori Marketing was launching a new showroom very soon at Dharampeth consisting of 22,000 square feet, he revealed.

Vedprakash Jaiswal, Director of Vedom’s, Dharampeth, said that the demand for air-conditioners was growing at 15 per cent to 20 per cent per annum. New technology and innovative features along with easy finance schemes were driving the airconditioner market.The leading AC bands were LG, Blue Star, Daikin, Mitsubishi, Videocon, Panasonic,Voltas, etc, said sources on the condition of anonymity.

Leading manufacturers had introduced new technology like the VRV, VRF which were mostly used for cooling larger areas like halls and were used by colleges, schools, hospitals, high-end residential projects, etc. Manufacturers were tinkering with new ideas and introducing new features in air-conditioners like solar power-run air-conditioners, air purifiers, Wi-Fi, etc.to woo the customers, sources further said. InVidarbha, about 50,000 units were sold annually and out of this, approximately 25,000 units were sold in Nagpur city. The airconditioner market size was about Rs 150 crore and the total electronics market was about Rs 900 crore and Rs 1,000 crore, said sources in the industry